`Jedi` Tape Campaign To Begin

December 20, 1985|The New York Times

HOLLYWOOD, CALIF — The line between video cassettes and movie theaters will blur a little more next month when CBS-Fox Video begins a $2 million advertising campaign for its cassette of Return of the Jedi, almost certain to be the largest marketing campaign in the short history of home video.

Most of the money will be spent on a television commercial that shows an Ewok from Return of the Jedi interacting with an American family. There will also be a sweepstakes, with a Mercedes atop a pyramid of 10,000 prizes. A decade ago, studios rarely spent more than $2 million on the theatrical release of a movie.

Priced at $79.98 each, approximately 400,000 cassettes of the third chapter in George Lucas`s Star Wars trilogy will be shipped on Feb. 25. The potential earnings to CBS-Fox are more than $20 million. Jedi will be trying to break the record of Ghostbusters (410,000 copies) as the largest-selling expensively priced cassette. But there`s another competitor in that race. Next month, Thorn-EMI-HBO`s Rambo will be making Ghostbusters its target, according to Nicholas Santrizos, Thorn`s president.

Why February, instead of having Jedi on the shelves of the nation`s 24,000 video stores in time for Christmas? ``This Christmas is going to be the largest video cassette recorder selling season in history,`` Len White, president of consumer products for CBS-Fox, says. ``In February, all those new VCR owners are going to want movies.``